Ordinary Soldiers of the Estates' Army. Overlooked Participants in the First Phase od the Thirty Years' War
Abstract
On 23rd May 1618, the third Prague defenestration took place. It was the first step of the rebellion against the Habsburg reign in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.
Two days later, rebels published a manifesto - Apologia, in which they explained and justified their action. It was obvious, though, that this document would not settle the conflict.
In another three days, on 28th May, the Directors published an order to gather soldiers to defend their country. Already in June 1618 the Estates recruited and mustered new military units and supplied their arising army with arms.
The war had begun. The Estates' army moved within Czech and Austrian battlefields until its well-known defeat on White Mountain on 8th November 1620.
Some soldiers fought in the units of Peter Ernst Mansfeld or Johann Georg von Jägerndorf until the final defeat of the uprising a few years later. Nevertheless, in Bohemia the rebellion was defeated in November 1620, in Moravia in December of the same year.
The armies of the Bohemian and Moravian Estates ceased to exist. We know the history of various battles and sieges that took place during the Bohemian Revolt.
We also know the biographies of many commanders and politicians, who were involved in the rebellion. Whom we do not know as well, are those who fought in the units of the Estates' army as common soldiers, and their families, who often joined the military campaigns together with them.
The aim of this paper is to present the life of common people in the Estates' military units, their experience in military camps and quarters or their efforts to face fear, hunger and diseases and to survive the hard conditions of life within an army. Information is given about the recruitment of soldiers, about their mustering, about supplying the army.
From period normative sources it is also possible to learn about the lives of common soldiers within the armies and about what they dealt with. These sources speak e. g. about the behaviour and discipline of soldiers and baggage in the army.
This contribution will present how common people became members of the Estates' army, what problems they had to deal with in the units and how their careers in the Estates' army ended. Sadly, it is impossible to follow the life of a specific Bohemian soldier, because there are no sources available for this - or they haven't been found yet.
Nevertheless, it is possible to outline some paths, which the estate soldiers could take in the beginning of the Thirty Years' War.